A Modern Eye
The heroism of Irish painting and Irish history gradually reemerges in the later 1960s as already prominent artists such as Louis le Brocquy turned to new
subject matter that could be more firmly associated with virtuous traditions. Le Brocquy's work with skeletal or "evoked" heads derives ultimately from the discovery of a Celtic sculpture, which the artist then adapts to the loose
portraiture of Irish heroes both past and present. Likewise, Robert Ballagh turned to a series of portraits of Irish literary and artistic celebrities living and
dead that insist on their cultural standing. The most potent move in this direction came in 1977 with 
Irish painters of the 1950s and '60s drew on the legacy of Mainie
Jellett and others who brought Modernism into the Irish art academies. The work of many of these artists continues to be marked by a sense of uncertainty and unease. Dan O'Neill's work
from the 1950s suggests a sense of alienation, of the oppressiveness of domestic life in which even the act of birth seems forlorn. When Irish subject matter itself appears, as in Nano Reid's Tinkers at Slieve Breagh
, it often identifies Irishness with rural poverty, as in Reid's depiction of a band of Irish gypsies. Cumulatively, such work seems to speak to the difficult economic situation in Ireland at this time, as artists
observed their country seemingly being left behind by postwar economic posterity. Ireland as an island nation, separate from Europe and divided in itself, continues to assert itself.
Micheal Farrell's